Repaired a Dell 17" monitor today, quite proud of myself! This whole bringing back dead stuff with a few bucks worth of capacitors is pretty addicting.
This is a monitor that was being used at my place of employment, as a paramedic, I work at an ambulance company. It had been being used as one of three monitors in a computer aided dispatching workstation and has been running continuously for about 5 years now. One day one of the dispatchers spilled a beverage on it and would not turn on after that. They bought a new one and this one has been sitting around collecting dust ever since. I asked if they would mind if I were to try fixing it, they said "sure".
So, I got it home and it didn't want to do anything, I tried pressing the buttons and nothing. I opened it up, and for a monitor that had a drink spilled on it, the interior was surprisingly clean, really no sticky residue anywhere. But, I gave the contacts and the boards a quick clean with isopropyl alcohol and distilled water nonetheless.
When I took out the power board and the controller, I found a few bulged capacitors on each. I replaced each capacitor on the power supply board with new capacitor from either FR or FC series from Panasonic and the main capacitor with a Chemi-con KXJ series. I decided not to completely recap the control board and only replaced the bulging one, I know it's not great for longevity but they were just so difficult to desolder that I didn't want to risk damaging the board and the others were pretty small capacitors.
Well, I put it all back together, and it now works just fine now! I really wanted to do before and after pictures, but honestly, it was such a pain in the ass to put back together that I didn't feel like taking it apart to do the photos.
I am not sure if it was the drink that killed the monitor, or if it was the capacitors and the drink just pushed it over the edge, but I don't really care at this point.
Now, I am planning on building a computer out of spare parts I have and using the monitor with it and then putting the system in the day room at the company so that those who are not fortunate enough to own a laptop (like me) can have a computer to use for basic web browsing.
Definite win today!
Yours,
Justin
This is a monitor that was being used at my place of employment, as a paramedic, I work at an ambulance company. It had been being used as one of three monitors in a computer aided dispatching workstation and has been running continuously for about 5 years now. One day one of the dispatchers spilled a beverage on it and would not turn on after that. They bought a new one and this one has been sitting around collecting dust ever since. I asked if they would mind if I were to try fixing it, they said "sure".
So, I got it home and it didn't want to do anything, I tried pressing the buttons and nothing. I opened it up, and for a monitor that had a drink spilled on it, the interior was surprisingly clean, really no sticky residue anywhere. But, I gave the contacts and the boards a quick clean with isopropyl alcohol and distilled water nonetheless.
When I took out the power board and the controller, I found a few bulged capacitors on each. I replaced each capacitor on the power supply board with new capacitor from either FR or FC series from Panasonic and the main capacitor with a Chemi-con KXJ series. I decided not to completely recap the control board and only replaced the bulging one, I know it's not great for longevity but they were just so difficult to desolder that I didn't want to risk damaging the board and the others were pretty small capacitors.
Well, I put it all back together, and it now works just fine now! I really wanted to do before and after pictures, but honestly, it was such a pain in the ass to put back together that I didn't feel like taking it apart to do the photos.
I am not sure if it was the drink that killed the monitor, or if it was the capacitors and the drink just pushed it over the edge, but I don't really care at this point.
Now, I am planning on building a computer out of spare parts I have and using the monitor with it and then putting the system in the day room at the company so that those who are not fortunate enough to own a laptop (like me) can have a computer to use for basic web browsing.
Definite win today!
Yours,
Justin
Attached Files
But today, I’m making an exception here. Why? No idea. Perhaps only because the repair details are still “fresh” in my head… which is ironic, given this is a 16 year old monitor that hardly anyone will care about today. It is new to me, though. 
I picked it up last November from someone on my local Craigslist. It wasn’t very close to where I live, but was close to a family friend that I had to go visit anyways. So after watching the posting on Craigslist for a few weeks and seeing it getting...
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